The World

Weekdays at 8 PM

Hosted by
Lisa Mullins

PRI’s The World is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. Hosted by Lisa Mullins in Boston, it is the first global radio news program developed specifically for an American audience.

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New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinta Arden introduced a new bill to parliament on Friday that aims to further tighten gun laws, as the country marks six months since the mass shooting in Christchurch that killed 51 Muslim worshippers.

This is New Zealand's second set of gun reforms after weak firearm laws were identified as a key reason why a suspected white supremacist was able to own semi-automatic weapons that he used to kill people gathered at two mosques for Friday prayers on March 15. A mandatory nationwide gun buy-back program was part of the reforms.

A storm system threatening the Bahamas with more heavy downpours and strong winds on Friday hampered the search for some 1,300 people missing in the wake of the worst hurricane in the nation's history and a massive humanitarian operation to help survivors.

The unnamed system, which had the potential of becoming a tropical storm, could drop up to 6 inches of rain through Sunday in some areas that were inundated nearly two weeks ago by Hurricane Dorian, forecasters said.

Israelis are heading back to the polls for the second time this year, and whether they love him, can’t stand him or happen to be indifferent about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this election is all about “Bibi,” as he’s known.

On Friday, the latest polling numbers found Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and the centrist Kahol Lavan, the “Blue and White” party, locked in a dead heat. Each party was projected to win 32 seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

Canada’s campaign for federal parliamentary elections officially began Wednesday. Voting will take place on Oct. 21 in what is expected to be a close contest between the parties led by incumbent Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.

A Federal Court in San Diego will hear a lawsuit on September 20th brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the issue of family separation at the US-Mexico border.

In Russia's municipal elections on Sunday, President Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia, was dealt a significant blow.

The results were part of a "smart vote" strategy orchestrated by the opposition. At the suggestion of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, many anti-Putin voters decided to vote for anyone other than a candidate from Putin's party, even candidates that voters might otherwise find distasteful.

"This was an experiment, and in those cities and regions where it was implemented for the first time, it worked very very well," Navalny said.

A month after India withdrew contested Kashmir's autonomy, locked it down with thousands of additional troops and made mass arrests, residents are resisting attempts by authorities to show some signs of normalcy returning in the Muslim-majority valley.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked special rights for Jammu and Kashmir state on Aug. 5, striking down long-standing constitutional provisions for the Himalayan region, which is also claimed by neighboring Pakistan.

On a recent Wednesday, Noam Shuster-Eliassi strolled around the tiny village in Israel where she grew up, Neve Shalom or "Oasis of Peace," wishing goodbye to her neighbors. The Israeli comedian was heading to Harvard University in just a few days for a fellowship at the Divinity School. There, she will be writing an hourlong comedy show in Hebrew, English and Arabic. She is calling it, “Coexistence My Ass.”

Oct. 1 will mark 70 years since Chairman Mao Zedong declared victory over his anti-communist enemies and founded the modern Chinese nation.

His rivals, a US-backed army known as the Kuomintang (KMT), mostly fled seaward. They landed in Taiwan, where their successors still run the island republic — or in Beijing’s view, a renegade province. Others escaped to Hong Kong.

Weak rainfall is unlikely to extinguish a record number of fires raging in Brazil's Amazon anytime soon, with pockets of precipitation through Sept. 10 expected to bring only isolated relief, according to weather data and two experts.

The world's largest tropical rainforest is being ravaged as the number of blazes recorded across the Brazilian Amazon has risen 79% this year through Aug. 25, according to the country's space research agency.

The Ducasse d'Ath begins Friday. It's a centuries-old festival featuring large puppets, giants and floats that parade through the streets of Ath, a village of 30,000 in the French-speaking region of Wallonia in Belgium. The exact purpose of the celebration has changed over time, but it celebrates the biblical story about David's triumph over Goliath.

Amid growing global condemnation, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said on Friday he may mobilize the army to help combat a record number of fires sweeping through the Amazon rainforest.

The Trump administration said it was "deeply concerned" about the wildfires and European leaders ratcheted up criticism of Brazil's handling of the crisis, which now looks set to be discussed at a summit of G7 leaders in France this weekend.

The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled a rule that allows officials to detain migrant families indefinitely while judges consider whether to grant them asylum in the United States, abolishing a previous 20-day limit.

The rule, which is certain to draw a legal challenge, would replace a 1997 court settlement that limits the amount of time US immigration authorities can detain migrant children. That agreement is generally interpreted as meaning families must be released within 20 days.

For the first time, scientists have found a treatment for extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis — a disease that, so far, was near-impossible to cure. In a groundbreaking development, the results show that the drugs will save most patients’ lives in a few months.

Tuberculosis is the deadliest infectious disease in the world, killing about 1.6 million people globally in 2017, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and drug-resistant strains make the disease even harder to contain.

People across the world describe their thoughts and emotions, share experiences and spread ideas through the use of thousands of distinct languages. These languages form a fundamental part of our humanity. They determine whom we communicate with and how we express ourselves.

On Monday, US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced changes to the application of the “likely to become a public charge,” or LPC, clause that would make it more difficult for legal immigrants who seek public assistance to qualify for permanent residence and citizenship.

Trying to justify the new rule, acting USCIS director Ken Cuccinelli said that the United States should only admit immigrants like his Irish and Italian ancestors who “came up from their bootstraps.”

A few months ago, Quinn Nystrom responded to a post on Facebook and decided to try something she had never done before: join a caravan to Canada. The reason she left her home in central Minnesota on the morning of May 3 for a five-hour drive north was to buy insulin from a pharmacy across the border in Fort Frances, Ontario.